


The Last Rites

by Slyboots



Series: The Killerverse [5]
Category: Silent Hill
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Cults, Gen, Gift Fic, Horror, Human Sacrifice, Religious Horror, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-21 20:17:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/904453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slyboots/pseuds/Slyboots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There was always a sacrifice. There was never a shortage of sinners."</p><p>In which the town claims its due, the Devil decides, and even good men must die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Deal With the Devil

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HappyLeech](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HappyLeech/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Sacraments](https://archiveofourown.org/works/894692) by [HappyLeech](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HappyLeech/pseuds/HappyLeech). 



> This thing was written for the charming and wicked HappyLeech, expanding on her “Sacraments” universe. The premise is simple: all of Walter’s victims were themselves serial killers.
> 
> I tried to mimic the following features of HappyLeech's original: every Victim's weapon of choice, where practical, was the same weapon that killed him/her; every chapter ended with an enigmatic note; and no one came out looking good!

 “Did the Lord,” said Luke Finney, “tell you I did it, Reverend?”

He was small, painfully small. With his head shaven, as he hugged his knees on the prison cot, he looked like a boy.

It was the third day of Finney’s imprisonment. On the Reverend Father’s orders, the guards had kept him well away from the sun.

“The Devil knows you did it,” said Jimmy Stone. “And that ought to be enough.”

Beside Finney on the cot, George Rosten glanced up from his prayers. “You’ve got to let him off, Jimmy. He’s not—not—”

“Not a fire-setter?” said Jimmy. “You’re a damn sight smarter than that.”

George’s lip curled. “He’s just a boy.”

“And a priest of the Holy Mother,” said Jimmy. He laid a callused hand on George’s head. “And a damn arsonist.”

The meaning hung unsaid: _and we’ve killed plenty of just-boys._

The room was too dark, too cold, for miracles. God’s light, Jimmy suspected, would never reach this deep.

“Four brothers and sisters.” Jimmy shook his head. “All gone up to God in smoke.”

Finney’s face crumpled. He started from the bed. Yet some bruise caught him, some remembered kick, and he fell back, whimpering through his teeth.

_A boy._

“Come on, Rev,” he breathed. “I don’t set fires these days. Haven’t for years. And murder—that’s wicked, Rev. That’s damnation, that is.”

“A priest,” said Jimmy. “A goddamned priest.”

Father Luke Finney, twenty-one years of age, closed his eyes.  “Go ahead, Rev. Take my heart.”

George looked away, fingering his rosary.

“I hope you choke on it,” whispered Finney. “I didn’t do nothing wrong.”

Far below them, the Water Prison’s engines ground and hissed. The floor rattled, spitting drops of murky water.

“I was gonna be a preacher. I was gonna save my soul.”

“Come on, Jimmy,” said George, over the distant bellow of water on stone. “Not him.”

_Why not?_

He watched George shiver, watched leeches squirm in the rivulets of water trickling down the walls.

_Who’s to say he wouldn’t go to hell? Who’s to say the priesthood would have saved a dirty damn arsonist?_

“I prayed.” Finney wiped his face with the back of a damp hand, smearing grit and tears over his cheeks. “All night, too.”

Jimmy settled onto the cot. The metal groaned, and Jimmy laid an arm on Finney’s bony shoulder. “You prayed,” he said, in cadaver tones. “All night.”

Finney nodded, sniffling. From behind him, George stared, gripping his rosary like a dagger.

“Now just you listen to me,” rasped Jimmy. “You’re dying for your sin. Have no doubt of that, my boy.”

_If it wasn’t you, boy, it’d be someone else._ There was always a sacrifice. There was never a shortage of sinners.

Finney stared at nothing.

“But you ever heard of a deal with the devil?”

“Yep,” said George. “Straight ticket to hell. They say you burn for ‘em.”

“They said right,” said Jimmy. “You’re going to burn, my boy. And in that fire—” He grinned. “—all your sins will go right up in smoke.”

An impossible light spread over Finney’s face. The shadows melted from beneath his eyes.

“If they burn you,” he whispered, “you go to Paradise.”

He flung damp arms around Jimmy, and the cell quaked with his sobs.

\---

There was always a sacrifice. There was always a death in the making.

A lace of greasy smoke hung over the pyre. It was Vespers, the sunset bronzing the tree leaves, and the children were filing down the steps.

“Seven-’o’-clock, Jimmy boy,” drawled Tobias Archbolt, leaning against the rusted swing. “Time for a cookout, by my watch.”

The fire had just begun to spit. On ground trodden flat over decades of use, on the ashes streaking the dirt, danced the shadow of the cross lashed to the pyre.

_A morality play for the ravens._

The old photographs of Blood Swamp had shown such tableaus: the bone-thin children circling round, soot in their hair, eyes wide in the firelight. The executioners in their neat red hoods, faceless and forgettable. Beautiful in their way, of course—

_Because you made it beautiful, Jim._ He snapped on his gloves; the evening grew colder, as if autumn were coming on early. _Fairy tales. In the end, the monster dies. The Devil is toothless and tame, and God’s grace abides over all, in Her name, amen, and so on and so forth._

The children were settling into their wide unbroken circle. At one end, George was straightening collars, smoothing hair, cooing over bruises. From behind his virgin-white veil he flashed a worried smile.

Jimmy did not return it.

_But Jim, you damn stupid farmhand, you ought to have known._

He strode, robes billowing, past the acolytes feeding pine twigs into the pyre. They were little older than Finney, still willow-thin and scabby with pimples. As one they paused; awkwardly, stupidly, they genuflected.

Jimmy walked on.

The Holy Mother boys—the Cowards for God, he’d privately named them, and it seemed less funny now—met him at the edge of the circle.  George, veiled and robed, was twisting a rosary between bony fingers; Toby stood at ease, breathing in smoke.

_You let me do it_ , thought Jimmy, _the blessed both of you._

“Finney’s coming,” said George softly. “Gave him the tea an hour ago. Just so’s he wouldn’t suffer.”

“You don’t want him to suffer,” said Jimmy.

George barely flinched. “—too much.” His smile broadened.

Jimmy hauled off. His hand landed with a snap, and fireflies rose in terrified clumps from the grass.

George cocked his head. He fingered the red mark just visible beneath the veil. “You crazy sonuvabitch. I love you, is that what you want to hear?”

It wasn’t; and Rosten’s whimpers—he was frightened, deathly frightened, beneath the cold smile—weren’t enough. All at once he felt his bones creak with age.

“Don’t pull anything stupid, Jimmy. And don’t you hit anyone who’ll hit back.” And George was gone.

Toby melted from the shadows. “Interesting performance, Reverend.”

Jimmy snorted, and they began to walk.

“I almost thought I’d see a man die tonight,” said Toby, checking his watch, as they passed the pyre. “That’s a tad above my pay grade, old buddy.”

“You senseless cocksucker,” whispered Jimmy hoarsely. He sped up, shrugging Toby’s pudgy hand from his shoulder. “You don’t understand the first _thing_ here, do you? Either of you?”

In a flutter of footsteps, Toby was beside him, casual as a crow stepping over a corpse. “Now, I’m what they call a disinterested party. You do what you want in this town. That was the agreement, yes?”

Jimmy scoffed. Yet he pulled his chasuble closer around his shoulders to keep out the sudden breeze.

“But I’d be _remiss_ —” Toby rolled it around his tongue. “—if I didn’t let you in on it. They say—” He broke off.

“You’ve come this far,” spat Jimmy. “Might as well tell me.”

Toby halted, blinking slowly. They had reached the compound door, and the sun was low in the trees now; Toby’s silvering hair shone an unnatural red. “Are you all that different, Jimmy, than those firebug kids?”

A cicada sawed the silence.

“Could be I ain’t,” said Jimmy, and he strode off, leaving his nagging thoughts behind him.

\---

“I din’t do it,” mumbled Finney. He swayed with every passing breeze. Ribbons of blood rippled down his back, where crude stitches puckered whip-lashes closed.

The whispers spread, child by child, through the circle.

“He says—”

“But the Fathers—”

“That don’t mean—”

“He didn’t do it!”

“Wun’t me.” Finney raised his head. For a moment he spread his arms beatifically. “But. ‘S okay.”

“Shut your trap, Luke.” Deacon Moritz flicked his wrist, and the birch spattered blood over their feet.

Deacon Lee slipped the ropes tight around Finney’s arms. Together, masked heads bobbing, they hoisted Finney onto his cross.

The wood creaked; the ropes caught.

_Backwoods beauty,_ thought Jimmy. _Bastard beauty._ The crucifixion had been his idea, in years before, when he’d been young enough to be entranced by pageantry and jerry-rigged symbolism.

_Bread and circuses. Promises of resurrection. Anything to soothe the devil inside._

“’M going to Paradise,” slurred Finney, and he turned his face to the sun. His shoulders popped, visibly deforming, as if Jimmy’s own hand had twisted the joint apart.

Jimmy leaned down as he swept past. “You’re going to feel it.”

Sweat was already pearling on Finney’s face. He smelled almost sweet, though the damp stain spreading over his trousers drew Jimmy’s eye. “Going to be a mar—mar—marcher, Rev. Going to sit at God’s right hand.”

Jimmy spat in his eye. “We’re having ourselves a goddamn barbecue,” he whispered through his hood, and Finney’s face screwed up.

“Bless you, son,” said Jimmy in normal tones, and straight-backed, he stalked away.

\--- 

The fire was chattering now, spitting bits of pine sap. From behind the pyre, the slender silhouette that was George splashed gouts of oil over Finney’s body.

Jimmy’s throat ached from the heat. Again he pounded his Red Book; again he barked some weary little psalm.

In the far shadows, Deacon Smith shifted his weight, his glasses winking in the firelight. Sister Wolf sat straight and cold beside him.

_You clever little heretics. You don’t believe a damned word of this, do you?_

If the Holy Woman sect wanted a show, if they’d come to gawk at the blasphemy of it, it was hardly his place to refuse. Jimmy raised his Book to the night sky.

“Didn’t the Lord sacrifice herself for us, brothers? Didn’t she give her life, that we might live on after?”

The children murmured, entranced with metaphor. Jimmy turned to glance over his shoulder, just in time. George’s knife flashed in the dark.

Blood and fat sizzled on the pyre, and Finney let out a drunken howl. In the corner of Jimmy’s eye, Toby rubbed his own hand.

The fingers George handed him were freshly burnt, the skin crumbling and ashy.

“Didn’t,” Jimmy bellowed, raising Luke Finney’s blessing fingers to the sky, “the Lord give us her flesh, that we might eat?”

They were still warm. He snapped brittle flesh from blackened bone in four neat bites.

The whimpers went up as one. Sister Wolf reached from the darkness, cuddling the closest child to her breast.

“And don’t we owe her a blessed thing in return?” roared Jimmy over Finney’s wails.

Deacon Smith’s lips moved. His greasy smile fell away.

_Yes, boy, you ain’t so slow as all that._ Jimmy smirked behind his hood. _You’ll catch on._

“Are we Christians? Do we forgive for nothing? Do we _forget_ trespasses?”

A skinny acolyte, his bald head winking with fresh razor-scabs, broke from the circle. “This ain’t the way,” he muttered to no one, slinking into the darkness. “Not how it goes.”

Jimmy’s voice dropped. “You’re damn well right, boy. And you ain’t the only one. Look around you.”

Heads turned, and shadows splintered and reformed. The whispers’ hiss rose up over the cackle of the fire, the children’s sobs, over everything—

“You’re about to see justice done,” said Jimmy. “Real justice, not that watered-down forgiveness. The justice of God. The mercy of God.”

“Jimmy,” said George. It sounded like a plea, like a prayer.

“Wasn’t,” said Finney dreamily. “Not me.”

“You all came to see a man go to heaven.” Jimmy stripped off his glove with a snap. He reached into his cassock. “Now you’ll see one go to hell.”

The first shot found its mark, and Luke Finney sagged, unforgiven, in his bonds.

\--- 

The fire burned down slowly. They were in no hurry to stop it.

“He didn’t do it,” said George. They stood shoulder to shoulder on the Wish House porch, watching the shadows dance on the fence. Below, Sister Wolf and Deacon Smith herded children, dabbing tears from soot-streaked faces; unheeded, DeSalvo barked his slurry orders. “You know he never.”

“I know.”

With a snort, DeSalvo dumped a pailful of water on the fire. Night fell abruptly over them.

“I thought you’d changed,” said George, and now there was a whine in his voice. “I forgave you.”

The old tension was creeping back into Jimmy’s bones. Justice had been done—but justice never lasted.

_You can’t pull the devil’s teeth. You can’t cage the scourge of God._

The steps creaked; the dark changed shape. “You’re damn cold-blooded, Jim boy. I’ll give you that.”

“Not the first time,” muttered George. “Not going to be the last. Shit, Jimmy, I thought—”

“Thought what? Thought he was a good man?” Toby laughed, a rich and gentle laugh. “He’s a killer. A stone cold killer.”

Jimmy pushed past them, shoving his pistol into a yielding hand. The orphanage door slammed shut.

\--- 

Valtiel was squatting, his head between his leathery knees, on the top stair. He scuttled back, chittering with a mouth that did not speak, watching through slits that did not see, as Jimmy’s flashlight clicked.

“Evening, Lord.”

The silence seemed richer, more fertile.

“Came to watch the doings in your name, I guess.”

Valtiel’s head bobbed. His tongue snaked out, feeling for the darkness.

“You tell your Maker, Lord,” said Jimmy softly, “I am _tired_. Tired of man, you could say. Tired of man’s _shit_.” His boots thudded punctuation as he climbed. “It don’t go away, Lord, and it don’t get better. The sinning and the cheating and the thieving and the fucking. All the disrespect. Wears a man down.”

The flashlight beam tightened on mottled skin, stretched drum-tight over wrinkled bone. Valtiel shivered and was gone.

Jimmy caught his breath on the top step. For a moment he listened to the night.

“How many I given you, Lord?”

He sounded younger in his own ears. A boy, not a man—a boy standing in a truck stop lot, just before dawn, all but alone. A boy bringing down a tire iron as heavy as the world.

“Twenty?” said Jimmy Stone into the past. “Thirty?”

The iron crunched home.

“You sweeten it for them. You tell them it’s for their own betterment. For their own immortal souls. That if they stay good and quiet, the Bogeyman don’t hardly know they’re there.”

He stumbled, dazed with memory, down the hall. The chittering followed him into his cell.

“But you don’t tame the Devil,” whispered Jimmy. He pulled off his hood. With the back of his hand he wiped the blood from his lips. “Only the Devil decides.”

Valtiel curled around the doorframe, watching him strip. Spongy fingers stroked Jimmy’s cheek.

“Even good men got to die.”

He dressed in silence. Outside the narrow window, someone was chanting.

Barefoot, he descended the stairs. He had reached the third step when the smell of old dust wrapped around him like a shroud.

Jimmy hesitated. “That you, Lord?”

The silence answered. _Lord,_ Jimmy thought, for the first and final time. _I’m insane, ain’t I? A man can’t take the killing. Not forever._

Hands as soft as rot closed around his throat. Lightly as a lover’s touch, Valtiel descended upon him.

Jimmy shrieked. Fingers gloved in brittle rubber slipped into his mouth; he gagged, and a smooth hard tongue licked his spittle away.

_I’m choking,_ he thought, with surprising calm. Spittle bubbled up his throat, welling beneath his tongue. _I’m going to die._

The corners of the world turned red. In the soft edges of his mind, Jimmy heard footsteps.

“Only,” said his own voice, “the Devil decides, Jimmy Stone. And now’s your time.”

The first shot found its mark.

\---

The moral: the man who thinks himself a devil will live like one. The man who makes himself a God will die like one.


	2. The Final Comeback Tour of the Toluca Strangler and his Almighty Killers’ Club

A gray dawn sloshed through the diner windows. In such a sleepy light—an indifferent light—the three boys huddled in the last booth could have been anyone at all.

They were still boys on that foggy Sunday morning. At the very least, they were not men.

Of this Robert Randolph was acutely aware.

“We need to get out of here,” he muttered, hunching round-shouldered over his coffee. “Preferably soon.”

Jasper flicked his lighter. Already he had done this three times; already their coffee tasted of charcoal.

_God save us from the socially handicapped,_ thought Robert, and then: _Smoke. Of course the idiot smells just like smoke._

Balled in his pockets, his hands remembered how to strangle a man.

\---

It was the seventh day of their camping trip.

When Robert considered logistics and lies and alibis—which, Sein was so fond of reminding him, he did not often do—it was this he remembered, the masterstroke of their plan.

In theory.

If it had a plan at all, this funny compulsive thing of theirs. This jerry-rigged, half-assed refuge for the terminal adjusto. This game. This Killers’ Club.

Their little secret. Cross your heart and hope she’ll lie; stick a dagger in her eye. Snitches got stitches. Kiss the teacher’s ass—just once—and when you turn around it’ll be to kiss St. Peter’s.

Kid stuff, really.

But the plan had been genius, the electric sort of genius reserved for lisping fat boys in cheap jeans who, on the one day God chose to smile down on their miserable lives, looked up and kicked Him in the nuts. It had been, Robert sometimes felt, the one good idea of Bobby Randolph’s life.

Certainly it had been the one good idea of Jasper Gein’s or Sein Martin’s.

The idea was simple in its brilliance: don’t get compulsive. Don’t be predictable. Don’t ever fall for that FBI-profiling crap.

Be random. Be manic. Make a joyful noise. Be a lightning rod. Raise your arms and shout for glory and let God in—the real God, the old-time religion Robert sometimes felt in his bones. The God of scream queens and Mountain Dew, of Jenny Carroll and Nickie Marsh, of picking up a hooker in South Vale and handing her around before you squeezed her neck just that little bit too hard. The God of lisping fat boys.

And lo, God said:

Go camping. Burn down a house. Burn down twenty. Then strangle a man just to feel him die, dump his body in yonder old-timey mining shaft, and roast some marshmallows just to keep ol’ Jasper grinning that crazy grin.

Then go to college, meet a girl, get a job. Pop out two-point-five kids, yessiree. And kick the murder habit like a big old football.

In My name, Bobby, you’ll be reborn. And don’t I know, praise be to Me, that Robert Randolph ain’t no Toluca Strangler.

_But I’ll give you a little longer. For old times’ sake._

It was a mindless Sunday morning, and the August sun steamed the early-morning fog from the diner windows. In two weeks, school would begin.

 ---

And lo, God said: _you’ve made it, Bobby. You’re on the news._

The television on the counter was older than Robert, perhaps older than Jasper, and its zigzagging aerials sloshed with static. Yet the caption, jittering to and fro like a bad videotape, was clear from across the diner.

“‘Chastain Heights arson case still unsolved,’ huh?” As he so often did these days, Jasper forgot to stutter.

“Goddamn it,” whispered Robert.

Sein’s spoon clinked frantically against his mug. Gouts of musty coffee sloshed over the rim, soaking in random spatters into his shirt. “Don’t get excited, Bobby—uh, Rob—”

The waitress glanced up, rapping the television with one knuckle. As one, they looked away.

“Awfully jumpy, Bobby,” drawled Jasper. “For a guy who didn’t d-do it.”

“Shut it,” said Sein. “Both of you.”

“It’s just some stupid TV show,” said Jasper. “N-not exactly Big Brother.”

The anchorman’s voice washed through the static, making them all jump. “—Maine law, facing terms of up to 120 years in federal—”

Jasper’s lighter popped and hissed.

“You put that thing away,” said Robert, in a different voice, a man’s voice, “or God help me, we’re through.”

“No one’s watching, Bobby,” said Jasper. “No one who m-matters.”

“Check!” yelped Sein, and they jumped again and glared. The waitress came; the waitress left; and still Robert’s nails dug for blood in his palms.

And lo, God said: _hit the road, Jack, and burn some serious sneaker rubber getting out of this town._

Abruptly Robert stood, knocking Sein aside. “This place blows,” he said, in Bobby Randolph’s voice, a _young_ voice. “Come on. Last one to the car pays the insurance.”

He was five steps from the glass-paneled door when the man added, “That might be me.”

A fifty-dollar bill blossomed between his fingers.

“N-need a r-r-ride, grandpa?”

It was Jasper’s car, five days stolen, and Robert’s protests chilled on his tongue.

“As a matter of fact, I do.” The man chuckled, the wrinkles around his eyes deepening, and leaned back in his booth. “But I don’t know. You boys aren’t up to anything suspicious, now, are you?”

The fifty rasped gently as he folded it into nothing.

“Ignore that. Bad joke.”

Now, in that voice as soft as a Cadillac’s leather, Robert heard it: the exquisite care of a speech-class veteran.

“No room at the inn,” said Sein. “Sorry. You break down?”

Robert could have answered that. Mud smeared the man’s slacks, their crease long since beaten away, and pebbled his vest. “Halfway up Mount Janus, for my sins. Haven’t hiked so far in years.”

With a flick of his wrist, an origami swan sailed across the table. President Grant peered from one wing.

And the Lord said: _Take him._

“You dumping a body up there?” said Robert at last. “Maybe planning to drop off a few more?”

“Kids these days.” He smiled, without irony. “Too many horror movies.”

 ---

“You keep playing with that lighter, my son, and you’re liable to drive straight off a cliff.”

His name was Toby Archbolt; he was from Ashfield, just across the state line from Massachusetts; he had indeed stuttered as a boy; and his pockets fluttered with fifty-dollar swans. He was—

— _rich,_ said the Lord, _and classy, and a regular electric genius._

The car was new enough that the sweet sickliness of gasoline had not yet leached into its plastic lining. Yet the shadows scraping the window made it feel cramped, all the same; Archbolt was a large man, though not nearly so big as Robert, and their knees brushed whenever the car jerked.

In fits and starts they crawled through the forest.

“So you were camping here?” said Archbolt after some time. “Not exactly the most pleasant place for it.”

Jasper shrugged from the front seat. “It was ch-ch-cheap.”

Archbolt nodded.

For several minutes they listened to the dull rain of branches on roof.

And then: “Guess you boys wouldn’t have heard about those campers disappearing right around here.”

“Yeah,” said Robert.

“That,” said Archbolt, “could mean anything.”

Now they were pulling up to the Devil’s Bridge, and the sun broke like a wave over them. In the middle distance, Chastain Heights was a scrubby gray smear in the valley.

A Baggie of battered cigarettes went round, hand to hand. (Why it missed Archbolt, none of them could precisely say.) The lighter followed, casting little firelight flickers over their exhausted faces.

“Family of four burned to death up there last week,” said Archbolt conversationally. “In their own home, too. Nasty business.” From nowhere he produced a cigarette; his own lighter fizzed. “Some summers you get lightning bugs. This year, looks like it’s firebugs.”

The lighter was gone as Robert watched.

“Did they catch the guy that did it?”

Their eyes met.

“They did,” said Archbolt evenly. “And a terrible thing he did. Devil of a man—and in all my years of religious practice, boys, I’ve never been able to feel much goodwill for the Devil.”

_You will,_ said the Lord, and Robert set his jaw. _When we get done, you’ll be kicking and screaming for the Devil to save you._

The canyon yawned beneath them, a great open maw. The bridge rattled like skeleton teeth.

“What were you doing up here, anyway?” said Sein, taking a drag.

Archbolt grinned. “Camping.”

 ---

The sign informing visitors of Chester Point’s natural beauty and historical significance sagged, unpainted for years, on its rotting post. Chester Point itself was a narrow beige streak on the mountain, invisible from Silent Hill proper—the sort of historical site nurtured, Robert felt, in a town with precious few other bragging points.

Yet, for all that, it was a godsend.

“Pull over,” he growled as the car rounded the cliff. Sein elbowed Jasper in the ribs, but too late; Robert had already flung open his door.

Archbolt climbed heavily from the car, peering around. “I take it we’re having a smoke break?”

Robert shrugged.

“Sounds reasonable,” said Archbolt. Between thumb and forefinger he crushed his still-smoldering cigarette.

By the time Sein and Jasper had gotten out, a scant few seconds later, he was nowhere to be seen.

“Son of a bitch,” muttered Sein. “The sooner we get him where he wants to go—”

“We aren’t going to,” said Robert.

In that moment, it seemed perfectly transparent. The damp air crackled, electric with God.

“Say _that_ a little louder.” Jasper shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Make sure he hears you.”

The pines quivered. Above their heads, a whippoorwill buzzed.

Robert cracked his knuckles. Already his hands ached. “I don’t give a crap if he hears me. All that _goodwill for the Devil_ stuff. He knew this was coming. Had to.”

He spread his arms, televangelist-style, wide enough to embrace the world.

“People are gonna come looking for him,” said Sein. “Family. Friends. Someone. He’s not—not just—”

It was too obvious, too clear. They were looking for complications. Robert fought down a groan. “Then I’m quitting after this. No more hobos. No more hookers. Cold turkey.”

Jasper flicked his lighter. Wordlessly he lifted it to the wide streak of sky.

“Killing dumb-ass kids is great,” said Robert, and now he smiled, too. “If you’re Jason. Freddy. Maybe Mike Myers. Anyone here Mike Myers?”

His voice dropped.

“He’s the last one. The _best_ one. The one I should’ve done first.”

“You’re crazy,” said Sein. “Batshit.”

“I’m not,” said Robert, his grin aching. “Because I can stop, guys. I can stop any time I want to.”

“Right,” said Jasper. Twice he clicked his lighter, his eyes wide and empty. In the centers of his pupils danced a tiny flame.

And the Lord God said, _Do the freak first._

Robert was three steps from Jasper when he stopped. For several breaths’ span he teetered in place.

And the Lord God said, _You’re one hard shove from the edge._

And then there was no God. Bobby Randolph stood, pinned like a butterfly, at the edge of the world.

“Go ahead and kill me, kids,” said Archbolt from behind him. “But you know, I think Bobby here might break my fall.”

He laughed, bearing down, and streams of fire burst through Robert’s shoulder.

“Thank the Lord for fat boys. Much bigger targets.”

And then there was only an endless streak of sky, and Toby Archbolt’s soft voice purring, “I’ll give you this, my son. If you’d gotten the jump on me—”

Robert gulped air. There seemed, somehow, to be a great deal of air.

His toes brushed nothingness. He wobbled forward, and Archbolt’s arm snapped forward to drag him back.

“You’ve done this before,” he said. In that instant, it sounded perfectly reasonable.

“Yep,” said Archbolt. “Careful, son, or you _will_ go over.”

“You’re crazy,” said Jasper, from a thousand thousand miles away. “Completely crazy.”

“Not at all.” Archbolt stepped smoothly back. Dreamlike, Robert followed. “Because, boys, I can stop myself.”

And then there was only Robert, falling.

He landed, knocking loose a groan, on the dirt path.

“Jesus,” whispered Jasper.

“There is no Jesus,” said Archbolt. He dropped to one knee beside Robert, offering a hand. “So far as I know, boys, there’s no one so tough he can’t be brought down. Even you. Even me.”

“Even the devil,” said Robert.

Archbolt nodded. “Maybe especially the Devil.” With a grunt, he hoisted Robert to his feet.

 ---

“You know you can’t tell anyone,” said Archbolt, several minutes later. “If it’s my word against yours, boys, my word is going to look like Gospel.”

The car sputtered through Hillside, candy-colored houses casting candy-colored shadows in the noonday sun. From the sidewalk, a boy waved to them, trailing a girl as small and chipmunk-cheeked as the rabbit doll dangling from her hand; Archbolt released the steering wheel to wave back.

“Smooth,” muttered Sein.

“That’s it, son. That’s the secret.”

They drove on.

“Shall I drop you off in Pleasant River, or where?”

“We’d have killed you,” said Robert. “You know we would have.”

For several minutes Archbolt did not speak. The Pleasant River docks flew past, filling the car with the damp smell of river mud.

“There are worse devils than me, Robert. Much worse.”

“You’re awful sure about that,” said Jasper abruptly. He was slumped low in the front passenger seat, his hands cupped around his lighter. “You’ve met him.”

“Oh, yes.” Archbolt’s voice was light. “I’ve met the devil. And now I imagine you want to meet him, too…”

 ---

And the Lord God said: _last shot. Eyes on the prize. And we all know the big rule, the first rule of glorious adulthood: no take-backs. Better make this one count, Bobby, my boy…_

In the dusty afternoon silence, sipping suicide punch on Mrs. Randolph’s back porch, the Killers’ Club had agreed: this was it.

“The Big Kahuna,” whispered Sein.

“Shut up,” Robert whispered back, though they walked alone under the ruddy sunset. A streetlight swung low in the breeze, clipping the faded sign below. A smooch of yellow paint remained, blotting out the final letter: UNIVERSITY AV.

Night fell unevenly. Though the air was warm, they walked shoulder to shoulder, huddled behind themselves.

“You said it wasn’t going to be c-choking, B-Bobby” said Jasper at last. “But you never said—”

From his sweatshirt Robert produced the pocketknife.

“The way the big bad cultist b-boys do it,” sneered Jasper. He turned away.

They walked on.

Their footsteps echoed, light as ghosts’ breath, down the alley. Something scurried past them, kicking up little eddies of dust.

“Was that—”

“There’s your d-d-devil,” said Sein. In the tingling darkness, he stuttered almost as badly as Jasper.

They pressed on.

“Jasper?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t you _ever_ call me Bobby again.”

Jasper’s grin was streaked with firelight. Nonchalantly he raised the lighter above their heads.

Robert would never remember lunging. He would forget the sour-sweet bite of the lighter fluid as it spilled, in gleaming gouts, across the sidewalk, and the soft whoosh of the fire as it spread.

And it was the the leathery flick of something too thin to be a finger that spurred him forward, stumbling over the spitting flames and around the corner.

Wreathed in gentle firelight, the Devil smiled at Bobby Randolph.

—-

The moral: don’t go chasing devils if you aren’t one yourself.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Toby is in this thing for three reasons: one, I wondered how Jasper and friends had heard about the “Devil”; two, the Order’s wheels are still turning even with Jimmy out of the picture; and three, he wandered into the first scene and refused to leave.
> 
> On a more general note, I remembered too late that the Ten Hearts murders canonically happened in February. To this I say: “Oh well. It’s an AU.”


End file.
